COLOOP

Partenaire

ANR, IRCAM

Intervention

Objet, Interface

Année

2017

Lieu

Paris

Coloop, the first connected collective sequencer

A true Twenty-first century ghettoblaster, Coloop is a distributed and collective musical instrument (a sequencer) capable of composing, memorizing and performing real sounds or synthesized sounds thanks to a powerful device that plays acoustic sound. Eight people can simultaneously operate the sequencer through the web application on their smartphones. An instrument to share amongst musicians, Coloop changes the experience, the listening and the action of collective music.

Born from the CoSiMa project in response to a call for proposals from the Agence Nationale de Recherche (National Agency for Research), Coloop is part of a powerful movement that, over the past ten years, has seen the relationship of media and instruments with users and their environment evolve through the emergence of tangible interfaces, augmented reality and ambient web. It’s goal is to explore this new relationship through new exclusive interfaces and collaborative creative tools, based on the latest smartphone and web technologies.cosima.ircam.fr

Several user scenarios, it works with all smartphones

Coloop can be used in several different ways and each of these scenarios makes the user’s smartphone interact with a particular function. To each play one instrument of a popular song, or to compose a song as a group through the use of a powerful sequencer. No need to download an app in order to use it because it all takes place on the phone’s web browser, thanks to the IRCAM and Webaudio technologies.

Optimizing clutte while improving acoustic capabilities.

This project, a second step in our collaboration with IRCAM, allowed us to extend our project management experience in areas beyond traditional product design.
We put 8 speakers on a cylinder, each taking care of a sound channel. This setup generates a true 360° sound that does not need to be simulated. However, we decided to use loudspeakers with the widest sound spectrum as possible and this resulted in low frequencies being not as powerful as we wanted. Since it was difficult and expensive to solve this problem using other type of speakers, we designed, thanks to IRCAM's know-how, an acoustic system that naturally amplifies the bass without using a subwoofer.

L’IRCAM (The Institute for Acoustic/Musical Research and Coordination) is a French center for scientific research, technological innovation and musical creation, founded by Pierre Boulez in 1969. This project was led by the team (ISMM team - Norbert Schnell - Frederic Bevilacqua)